Reviews: 'Yoshi's New Island,' 'Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes'

“Yoshi's New Island” isn't a bad game, but being a successor to one of the best SNES platformers – Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island – it doesn't live up to expectations.

The 3DS title looks and plays like the SNES classic. Colorful Yoshis embark on a mission with Baby Mario to rescue Baby Luigi from the clutches of Baby Bowser. Each level looks like they were drawn by a very artistic 5-year-old and fit well with the game's charming theme. It looks much better in motion than preview screenshots. The music, on the other hand, can be cringeworthy most of the time with a sprinkling of relaxing tunes that reminded me of “Peanuts.” Mostly, they sound like a 5-year-old was thrown a bunch of instruments who just had at them. While this, too, plays off the kiddy aesthetics, the music becomes repetitive and distracting in a hurry.

It's not a difficult journey until you enter the last couple worlds where “Yoshi's New Island” puts your platforming and egg-throwing skills to the test. However, boss fights in the SNES game were epic and memorable, but here they're lazy with simple attack patterns. Besides single player, there's also a multiplayer mode with various mini-games to play.

Like in most-recent Nintendo platformers, the toughness comes from nabbing all the collectibles, in this case the classic red coins and flowers and reaching the end of each level with 30 stars. Level design is top notch, and collecting everything requires exploring every nook and cranny for hidden paths, throwing eggs with precision and making dangerous double jumps onto platforms.

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New elements include giant eggs that somehow the Yoshis are able to squeeze out of their tiny bodies. They can be tossed at big arrows to create chain reactions to collect items and unlock paths, as well as dive underwater to stop from floating to the surface. However, these portions of the game are too few and far between, and don't really add much to the gameplay anyway. The sequences where Yoshis transform into different modes of transportation are alright but are held back by awkward gyroscope controls that'll have you twisting the handheld every which way. It seems like the developers knew this would be a problem since they let you start them over to collect what you missed.

While “Yoshi's New Island” is an adequate platformer, it fails to recapture the magic of its predecessor. At a premium $39.99 price tag, more effort needed to go into it.

2 stars out of 4

Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes (PS4 version)

It's unfortunate the hot topic about this prologue to “Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain” is its $29.99 price tag and the amount of content that comes with it. Yes, the “Ground Zeroes” lone main mission can be completed in just over an hour, where you control Snake through a base to rescue a couple characters from the “Peace Walker” title. However, there are side missions to partake in after completing it and hidden collectibles to find that add in several more hours of gameplay.

The new sandbox approach offers up multiple ways to complete objectives, and it's fun figuring out different ways to complete the end goal, like sneaking onto the back of a vehicle to gain access in a restricted area. With little to go on, I found myself walking around the base aimlessly while avoiding guards. Doing so made me a better player.

The stealth mechanics are excellent and everything controls smoothly. The binoculars mark enemies to give you a better handling of the situation, and guards can be interrogated to obtain key information and spots on the map. Getting caught activates a slow motion effect for a few seconds to give you a chance to dispatch a guard before he alerts others. It's a nice safety net that works well.

Enemy AI, at least on normal difficulty, is laughable at times. Sometimes they don't investigate a noise you make, or they'll shine a flashlight in your general direction and forget about it. If they find a body, they don't freak out too much like they should. When the alarms go off, hiding in one spot for a small period of time will slowly calm things down. If there's one thing Kojima Productions should improve upon for “The Phantom Pain,” it's this.

“Ground Zeroes” is built using the new Fox Engine, which is very impressive looking. The lighting effects on the guard towers' spotlights are remarkable. I noticed no stuttering even during action-packed shootouts.

Kiefer Sutherland of “24”³ fame is the voice of Snake, which came to the shock of many when it was announced he would be replacing the popular David Hayter. With little to go on from this game, it's hard to say if it was the right decision. Sutherland has a well-known voice, so it is kind of weird hearing him at first.

Personally, this game is about $10 too expensive for what it offers. Those playing for the story will leave disappointed. “Ground Zeroes” is designed for the diehards who need more Metal Gear in their life. For them, it's a small taste – but a good one – of things to come.

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